How Many Wars Is The US Fighting?

Dissenter sheds light on a recent report:

Linda J. Bilmes and Michael D. Intriligator, ask in a recent paper, “How many wars is the US fighting today?”

Today US military operations are involved in scores of countries across all the five continents. The US military is the world’s largest landlord, with significant military facilities in nations around the world, and with a significant presence in Bahrain, Djibouti,Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Kyrgyzstan, in addition to long-established bases in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and the UK.1 Some of these are vast, such as the Al Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar, the forward headquarters of the United States Central Command, which has recently been expanded to accommodate up to 10,000 troops and 120 aircraft.

Citing a page at US Central Command’s (CENTCOM) website, they highlight the “areas of responsibility” publicly listed:

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) is active in 20 countries across the Middle Eastern region, and is actively ramping-up military training, counterterrorism programs, logistical support, and funding to the military in various nations. At this point, the US has some kind of military presence in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, U.A.E., Uzbekistan, and Yemen.

US Africa Command (AFRICOM), according to the paper, “supports military-to-military relationships with 54 African nations.”

Altogether, that makes 74 nations where the US is fighting or “helping” some force in some proxy struggle that has been deemed beneficial by the nation’s masters of war.

Beyond that, there are Special Operations forces in countries. Jeremy Scahill in Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, writes, “By mid-2010, the Obama administration had increased the presence of Special Operations forces from sixty countries to seventy-five countries. SOCOM had about 4,000 people deployed around the world in countries besides Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The forces were deployed, as the Washington Post reported, to “go beyond unilateral strikes” and train “local counterterrorism forces” and engage in “joint operations with them.” Plans for both “preemptive” and “retaliator strikes” existed in “numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot” was identified or “after an attack linked to a specific group.”

Scahill also reports, based on his own “well-placed special operations sources”:

…[A]mong the countries where [Joint Special Operations Command] teams had been deployed under the Obama administration were: Iran, Georgia, Ukraine, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, Yemen, Pakistan (including in Baluchistan) and the Philippines. These teams also at times deployed in Turkey, Belgium, France and Spain. JSOC was also supporting US Drug Enforcement Agency operations in Colombia and Mexico…

Global assassinations have been embraced by the current administration, opening the door to night raids, drone strikes, missile attacks where cluster bombs are used, etc. Each of these operations, as witnessed or experienced by the civilian populations of countries, potentially inflame and increase the number of areas in the world where there are conflict zones.

A Congressional Research Service (CRS) provides an accounting of all the publicly acknowledged deployments of US military forces. It indicated that, as many Americans may not be aware, in February of this year, 100 military personnel were deployed to Niger to “provide support for intelligence collection” and to “facilitate intelligence sharing with French forces conducting operations in Mali, and with other partners in the region,” according to President Obama.

Also, according to the report, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel ordered American troops to be deployed to Jordan. Hagel told the Senate Armed Serivcies in a statement on Syria that they would be there to “work alongside Jordanian forces to ‘improve readiness and prepare for a number of scenarios.’” Up to 200 troops would be deployed.

In 2012, Obama reported to Congress that “US combat-equipped military personnel” had been deployed to Uganda “to serve as advisors to regional forces” that were “working to apprehend or remove Joseph Kony and other senior Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) leaders from the battlefield and to protect local populations.” About 90 US military personnel were deployed and “elements” were sent to “forward locations in the LRA-affected areas of the Republic of South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic.” President Obama stated US forces were not to engage LRA forces “except in self-defense.”

Approximately 817 military personnel were contributed to the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR), presumably to “stop the ‘movement, arming, and financing of certain international terrorist groups,’ as well as the “proliferation by sea of weapons of mass destruction and related materials.’” there were continued operations in Libya as well as operations in Yemen that were acknowledged. [By the way, it takes thirty-three pages for CRS to list all "notable deployments of military forces overseas" since 1798.]

Obama administration officials might argue that none of these operations in various different countries represent different conflicts or wars. All are connected to the “Global War on Terrorism” and the Authorized Use for Military Force (AUMF) after the 9/11 attacks give the president the executive authority to have forces in all parts of the world conducting whatever operations are deemed necessary to fight “terrorism.” Or, they might claim the US is technically not “involved” in wars if they are merely operating as advisors, who help facilitate military operations of other allied or proxy forces.

Any number of games with semantics or euphemism can be played by officials authorizing these operations. Undoubtedly, there are probably countries where the US has forces that have gone unmentioned in this post.

The reality is current US wars are not limited to the one winding down in Afghanistan and the other one that recently ended in Iraq. There are numerous wars going on unannounced, undeclared and in secret. The world is literally a battlefield with conflicts being waged by the US (or with the “help” of the US). And, no country is off-limits to US military forces.

The Entebbe Option

How The U.S. Military Thinks Israel Might Strike Iran.

BY MARK PERRY
Courtesy Of "Foreign Policy"

"What we do is a kind of reverse engineering," the senior planner said. "We take a look at their [Israeli] assets and capabilities, put ourselves in their shoes and ask how we would act if we had what they have. So while we're guessing, we have a pretty good idea of what they can and can't do."

According to several high-level U.S. military and civilian intelligence sources, U.S. Central Command and Pentagon war planners have concluded that there are at least three possible Israeli attack options, including a daring and extremely risky special operations raid on Iran's nuclear facility at Fordow -- an "Iranian Entebbe" they call it, after Israel's 1976 commando rescue of Israeli hostages held in Uganda. In that scenario, Israeli commandos would storm the complex, which houses many of Iran's centrifuges; remove as much enriched uranium as they found or could carry; and plant explosives to destroy the facility on their way out.

Centcom, which oversees U.S. military assets in the Middle East, has been given the lead U.S. role in studying the possible Israeli strike. Over the past year its officers have met several times at Centcom headquarters in Tampa, Florida, and with Fifth Fleet naval officers in Doha, Qatar, to discuss their conclusions, the sources say.  

But it's not clear that Israel, even with its vaunted military, can pull off a successful strike: Netanyahu may not simply want the United States on board politically; he may need the United States to join militarily. "All this stuff about 'red lines' and deadlines is just Israel's way of trying to get us to say that when they start shooting, we'll start shooting," retired Admiral Bobby Ray Inman told me. "Bottom line? We can do this and they can't, because we have what the Israelis don't have," retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner said.

One thing is clear: the U.S. military, according to my sources, currently has no interest in a preventive strike. "The idea that we'll attack with Israel is remote, so you can take that off your list of options," former Centcom commander Joe Hoar told me. Nor will the United States join an Israeli attack once it starts, the senior U.S. planner said. "we're not going to go piling in simply because the Israelis want us to."

Three high-level U.S. military and intelligence sources have told me that Centcom has identified three options for Israel should it decide to take preventive military action against Iran.

The first and most predictable option calls for a massed Israeli Air Force bombing campaign targeting key Iranian nuclear sites. Such an assault would be coupled with strikes from submarine-launched cruise missiles and Israeli-based medium-range Jericho II and long-range Jericho III missiles, according to a highly placed U.S. military officer. The attack may well be preceded by -- or coupled with -- a coordinated cyber and electronic warfare attack.

But planners for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Centcom have concluded that, because of limits to Israel's military capabilities, such an aerial campaign could not be sustained. "They'll have one shot, one time," the U.S. military officer said. "That's one time out and one time back. And that's it."

While Israel has 125 sophisticated F15I and F16I fighter-bombers, only the roughly 25 F15Is are capable of carrying the bunker-busting GBU-28 guided missile, which has the best chance of destroying Iran's heavily fortified nuclear installations. And even then, each F15I can only carry a single munition.

This force, while lethal, is also modest. The Israeli Air Force would likely have to carefully pick and choose its targets, settling most probably on four: the heavy-water production plant at Arak, the uranium-enrichment centers at Fordow and Natanz, and the uranium-conversion facility at Isfahan, while leaving out the military site at Parchin and the nuclear reactor at Bushehr, which houses Russian technical experts.

The Israeli attack would also likely include the F16Is to knock down Iran's air defense network, or perhaps drop other, less effective, bunker-busting munitions to reinforce the F15I sortie. Some of these F16Is, but not all of them, would be able to refuel from Israel's seven to ten KC-707 tankers.

Even with that, and even with the best of luck (good weather, accurate targeting, sophisticated refueling, near total surprise, precise air-to-air interdiction, a minimum of accidents, and the successful destruction of Iran's anti-aircraft capabilities), senior U.S. military officers say that Israel would only set back Iran's nuclear capability by one to two years at best -- not end it.

Israel's likely inability to destroy Iran's nuclear capacity in a single stroke, even in a best-case scenario, has led U.S. war planners to speculate about a second, out-of-the-box, and extremely dangerous military option: what they're calling an "Iranian Entebbe."

In this scenario, the Israelis would forego a massed air attack and instead mount a high-risk but high-payoff commando raid that would land an elite Sayeret Matkal (special forces) unit outside of Iran's enrichment facility at Fordow, near Qom. The unit -- or other elite units like it -- consisting of perhaps as many as 400 soldiers, would seize Iran's enriched uranium for transport to Israel.

The operation's success would depend on speed, secrecy, simplicity, and the credibility of Israeli intelligence. According to the Pentagon war planner, Israel's access to intelligence on Iranian military and policy planning is unprecedented, as is their willingness to share it with U.S. intelligence officials.

The Israeli unit would be transported on as few as three and perhaps as many as six C-130 aircraft (which can carry a maximum of 70 troops) that would be protected by a "swarm" of well-armed F16Is, according to the scenario being considered by U.S. military officers. The C-130s would land in the desert near Fordow. The Israeli commandos would then defeat the heavily armed security personnel at the complex, penetrate its barriers and interdict any enemy units nearby, and seize the complex's uranium for transport back to Israel. Prior to its departure, the commando unit would destroy the complex, obviating the need for any high-level bombing attack. (Senior U.S. military officers say that there are reports that some of the uranium at Fordow is stored as uranium hexafluoride gas, a chemical form used during the enrichment process. In that case, the material may be left in place when the commandos destroy the complex.)

"It's doable, and they have to be thinking along these lines," the highly placed U.S. military officer said. "The IDF's special forces are the best asset Israel has." That said, "In some scenarios," the U.S. military planner who told me of the potential operation said, "there would be very high Israeli casualties because of nearby Republican Guard divisions. This operation could be quite bloody."

Bloody or not, the Israeli leadership may not be quick to dismiss such an operation, given Israel's history of using such units. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are former Sayeret Matkal officers, and recently Israeli Defense Forces head Benny Gantz (himself a Sayeret Matkal veteran)said the IDF had formed an elite special operations "Deep Corps" to strike far inside hostile territory. And, of course, it bears remembering that Netanyahu's brother Yonatan was the sole casualty in Israel's Entebbe operation.

The difficulty with the Entebbe-style option is that Israel would be forced to mount "a robust CSAR [combat search and rescue] capability" to support it, a senior JCS planner noted. That would mean landing other C-130s carrying helicopters that could pick up endangered commandos or retrieve downed aircraft crews. Such CSAR units would have to be deployed to nearby countries, "or even land in the Iraqi desert," this senior officer said. This CSAR component complicates what might otherwise be a straightforward operation, as it involves other vulnerabilities -- an "escalatory ladder" that Israel may not want to climb. 

Skeptics of this option include Admiral Inman. "The Israelis could get to Entebbe," he said, "but they can't get to Iran. My sense is that the fact that the Israelis are even thinking about this operation shows that they realize that their first, bombing option won't work. They're desperately grasping for a military solution, and they know they don't have one."

But Colonel Gardiner believes this Entebbe-style operation is possible. "It's a non-escalatory option, it's entirely doable, and it's not as dangerous as it seems," he said. "We have to understand what Israel's goal is in any attack on Iran. The whole point for Israel is to show that they can they can project power anywhere in the region. So let's take a look at this from their perspective. There aren't three divisions near Fordow, there's one, and it's dug in. It wouldn't take the Iranians three hours to respond, it would take them three days. This reminds me of Osirak [the Iraqi nuclear reactor that Israel destroyed in a 1981 airstrike]. The last ones who wanted to admit that the Israelis did that were the Iraqis. That'll be the case here. The Iranians will be embarrassed. It has appeal. It makes sense. If it's simple, if it's done fast, if it's in and out. It could work."

A third operation is less exotic, but perhaps most dangerous of all: regime decapitation. "The Israelis could just take out the Iranian leadership," the senior Pentagon war planner said. "But they would only do that as a part of an air strike or a commando raid." The downside of a decapitation strike is that it would not end Iran's nuclear program; the upside is that it would almost certainly trigger an Iranian response targeting U.S. military assets in the region, as it would leave the Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces in charge of the country. It would be the one sure way, U.S. officers with whom I spoke believe, for Israel to get the United States involved in its anti-Iran offensive, with the U.S. mounting operations in a conflict it didn't start.

How would the U.S. military respond to an Iranian attack? "It depends," the Pentagon planner said. "If the Iranians harass us, we can deal with it, but if they go after one of our capital ships, then all bets are off." Even so, a U.S. response would not involve a full-scale, costly land war against the Tehran regime, but rather a long-term air interdiction campaign to erode Iranian military capabilities, including its nuclear program, the planner said.  

But a decapitation campaign would deepen the rift between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government. The war talk in Jerusalem has already eroded the views of many senior U.S. military officers who were once strongly committed to Israel, but who now quietly resent Netanyahu's attempt to pressure the United States into a war that it doesn't want. "Our commitment to Israel has been as solid as with any ally we've ever had, and a lot of officers are proud of that," Lt. General Robert Gard, a retired Army officer, said. "But we've done it so that they can defend themselves. Not so they can start World War III."

This U.S. distaste for involvement in an Israeli strike has been percolating for some time. In March, the New York Times detailed a Centcom war game dubbed "Internal Look," in which the United States was "pulled into" a regional conflict in the wake of an Israeli attack. The results "were particularly troubling" to Gen. James Mattis, the Centcom commander. Among its other conclusions, "Internal Look" found that Iranian retaliation against U.S. military assets could result in "hundreds of U.S. deaths," probably as the result of an Iranian missile attack on a U.S. naval vessel. The simulation, as well as Iranian threats to close the Straits of Hormuz, suggest why Mattisrequested that the White House approve the deployment of a third aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf.

But while Mattis was worried about the Iranians, he was also worried about Israel, whose saber-rattling he views with discomfort, his closest colleagues say. "Internal Look" not only showed that the results of an Israeli attack were unpredictable, as the Times reported, but, according to a Pentagon official, it also showed that the less warning the United States has of an Israeli attack, the greater the number of casualties the United States will suffer. "The more warning we have, the fewer American lives we'll lose," a Pentagon civilian familiar with U.S. thinking on the issue told me. "The less warning, the more deaths."

According to another senior Pentagon official, Obama and Gen. Martin Dempsey "have discussed in detail" the likelihood of an Israeli attack. As early as the autumn of 2011, when Dempsey became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Obama told him that the United States would "neither help nor hinder" an Israeli strike, this official said. While Obama's closely guarded formulation hasn't made it into the American press, his words are common knowledge among Israeli officials and had appeared just six months after Obama took office, in July 2009, in a prominent editorial in the pro-Netanyahu daily Israel Hayom.

Obama, the editorial stated, "will try to have a dialogue with Iran" while knowing that such an effort will probably not succeed. Obama "would prefer that there be no Israeli attack but is unprepared to accept responsibility for Israel's security if he fails [in a diplomatic dialogue] and the U.S. prevents Israel from attacking," the editorial added. "Thus it arises that while Israel has no green light to attack Iran, it does not have a red light either. The decision is Israel's. The U.S. will neither help nor hinder."

Nevertheless, the U.S. military fears that Iran will assume the United States has approved an Israeli strike, even if it hasn't -- and will target U.S. military assets in the Persian Gulf. That may be why Dempsey told a roundtable of London reporters in August that he did not want to appear "complicit" in an Israeli attack. The remark touched off speculation that the United States was softening its stance toward Tehran or pressuring Israel to back away from using military force. In fact, nothing had changed: Dempsey was explicitly telling Iran that any Israeli attack would not have the approval or the help of the United States. So while Israel waited for Obama to explain or correct Dempsey's statement, no clarification was forthcoming. "Dempsey knew exactly what he was saying," the highly placed military officer said, "and he wouldn't have said it without White House approval." After a moment, he added: "Everything the military says has to be cleared, and I mean everything."

Those outside the U.S. government who follow these issues closely agree. "The administration's message has been remarkably consistent," U.S.-Iran expert and author Trita Parsi said. "We always hear about how America believes war is 'the last resort,' but in this case, President Obama really means it."

Gard, the retired Army officer, agreed: "It's clear to me that President Obama will do everything he can to stop Iran from getting a bomb," he said. "But no president will allow another country to decide when to shed American blood. Not even Israel." Gard has a reputation as a military intellectual, has led several initiatives of retired military officers on defense issues, and is a useful barometer of serving officers' views on sensitive political controversies. "There is a general disdain in our military for the idea of a preventive war," he said, "which is what the Israelis call their proposed war on Iran."

Still, according to a respected retired military officer who consults with the Pentagon -- and who speaks regularly with senior Israeli military officers -- Israel's political elite is likely to be surprised by Obama and the U.S. military's response should Israel launch a preventive attack on Iranian nuclear sites. "If Israel starts a war," this retired officer said, "America's first option will be to stop it. To call for a ceasefire. And, by the way, that's also our second and third option. We'll do everything we can to keep the war from escalating. We'll have 72 hours to do that. After that, all bets are off."

Humanitarian Aid Is Military Intervention

 


By Joel Poindexter, 
March 22, 2012 
Courtesy Of "Anti-War"

The recent YouTube documentary Kony 2012 has become quite a sensation. It has inspired millions of people to demand, in one form or another, that the U.S. military take action in Uganda in order to bring to justice a supposedly ruthless warlord. The fact that numerous wars are being waged already, none of them just, inexpensive, or anywhere near a real end, is not even considered. That such little thought is apparently being given to the consequences of greater U.S. military involvement is indeed troubling.

Similarly, many Americans strongly desire to intervene in Syria, as evidenced by this recent poll conducted by Fox News. Fortunately, most polled did not wish to see overt military action, and only 14% were in favor of a ground invasion. However, 82% agreed that the United States should “provide humanitarian aid.”

But exactly how might the United States provide this aid without the use of ground troops? After all, we are told that President Bashar al-Assad is oppressing dissidents and using his military to slaughter rebels. If aid were sent to this war-torn country, how might we ensure it is not intercepted on its way to those who need it? The answer to this question is very important and must be carefully thought out before we rush headlong to intervene in yet another conflict.

Historically, the role of the U.S. military was to “provide for the common defense” of the states, as outlined in the Constitution. Local militias played a much larger role in defending the states from both foreign and internal threats. And for this reason, large standing armies were far less common throughout most of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Only when the mainland was invaded were large armies raised to repel the attackers.

Despite these military buildups during times of heavy conflict, such as the War of 1812, the War Between the States, and World War I, the military typically experienced a reduction in force following the end of hostilities. While some troop reductions occurred at the close of the Second World War, President Dwight Eisenhower famously noted that a “permanent armaments industry of vast proportions” had risen during the course of the Cold War.

The end of the Cold War brought with it some reductions to the U.S. military. Nevertheless, its budget remained vast relative to that of other industrialized nations. It is now many times higher than the next country’s military outlays. The “military-industrial complex” described by Eisenhower has become deeply ingrained in the political process and the culture at large.

Military intervention, large and small, clandestine and open, has become the norm in U.S. foreign relations. The result is that very little justification is needed to send U.S. troops into virtually any country around the world, regardless of whether any real threat exists. Propaganda and insinuation are  all a president needs to begin dropping bombs and deploying ground troops.

The ease with which many Americans now favor sending troops abroad is disturbing. This is especially true in light of how few Americans will actually take part in the actions themselves, or even see the effects such policies have on those who live in the subject countries. In some ways this is a good thing; the fewer who experience war, the better. War is not a place for people. The downside to this is that, as we’re seeing, the insulation means that war is less offensive and thus more likely to be easily supported.

At one time I fully supported such policies. Not only did I think it was the proper role for the United States to intervene in the affairs of other nations, I felt called to participate in the endeavor. I, along with millions of others, was fooled into thinking that sending armed men trained to kill and maim others wouldn’t lead to increased violence and destruction. Looking back on it all, I’m always struck by how confused my thinking was.

The very idea that an organization principally designed to cause humanitarian disasters — for that is what war truly is — should be used to relieve human suffering is preposterous. No matter what the specified goal, stationing armed troops in a foreign land almost always leads to conflict. Consider Operation Restore Hope, the name given to the 1992-1993 humanitarian mission in Somalia. Originally designed to relieve famine in the horn of Africa, it quickly escalated into a much larger military operation, resulting in catastrophe.

When I first arrived in Baghdad at the beginning of 2005, I certainly believed that removing Saddam Hussein and “liberating” the Iraqi people was a noble undertaking. When I first began patrolling the city, we were often thanked for removing Saddam Hussein. This, I thought, was all the proof I needed to conclude that justice had been served. Then I began to see people die.

No matter what perception the Bush administration hoped to convey, we were anything but liberators. Tens of thousands were killed, and millions were displaced from their homes. As an occupying force we imposed martial law on the people. Curfews were strictly enforced. Violators were arrested and taken to jail. Homes were raided in the dark of night. Fathers, sons, and brothers were rounded up, blindfolded, and secreted away. So violent were the prisons, a sentence of six years or longer may as well have been for life: that was the average lifespan inside. Many were tortured and abused by the very same force sent to free them from a tyrant.

Some of the arrested had no doubt engaged in violence, though it was in retaliation against an invading army or toward rival Iraqi groups. In either case, the U.S. military had no business invading a nation that had not attacked or threatened the U.S. We had become that which we were sent to remove: a tyrannical force that intimidated the populace, destroyed their property, kidnapped their family members, and murdered them without regard.

The American people must recognize that sending men with guns to deliver humanitarian aid is no way to bring peace to a war-torn country. Instead of protesting the actions of other governments, we should hold our own accountable first. Instead of delivering freedom through airstrikes and tank fire, we should demand trade and friendship.

Thousands Of US Troops Going To Israel

January 2, 2012 
Courtesy Of "WhiteOut Press"

January 2, 2012. Jerusalem. In one of the most blacked-out stories in America right now, the US military is preparing to send thousands of US troops, along with US Naval anti-missile ships and accompanying support personnel, to Israel. It took forever to find a second source for confirmation of this story and both relatively mainstream media outlets are in Israel. With one source saying the military deployment and corresponding exercises are to occur in January, the source providing most of the details suggests it will occur later this spring.

Calling it not just an “exercise”, but a “deployment”, the Jerusalem Post quotes US Lt.-Gen Frank Gorenc, Commander of the US Third Air Force based in Germany. The US Commander visited Israel two weeks ago to confirm details for “the deployment of several thousand American soldiers to Israel.” In an effort to respond to recent Iranian threats and counter-threats, Israel announced the largest ever missile defense exercise in its history. Now, it’s reported that the US military, including the US Navy, will be stationed throughout Israel, also taking part.

Also confirming the upcoming US-Israeli military missile exercises is JTA.org - 'global news service of the Jewish people'. In their account, they report, 'Last week, plans for Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, to visit Israel in January were leaked to Israeli media; his visit likely will coincide with the largest-ever joint U.S.-Israel anti-missile exercise'.

While American troops will be stationed in Israel for an unspecified amount of time, Israeli military personnel will be added to EUCOM in Germany. EUCOM stands for United States European Command.

In preparation for anticipated Iranian missile attacks upon Israel, the US is reportedly bringing its THAAD, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, and ship-based Aegis ballistic missile systems to Israel. The US forces will join Israeli missile defense systems like the Patriot and Arrow. The deployment comes with “the ultimate goal of establishing joint task forces in the event of a large-scale conflict in the Middle East”.

The Jerusalem Post reports that US Lt.-Gen Frank Gorenc was in Israel meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Brig.-Gen Doron Gavish, commander of the Air Defense Division. While there, the US General visited one of Israel’s three ‘Iron Dome’ anti-missile outposts. The Israeli Air Force has announced plans to deploy a fourth Iron Dome system in the coming months. Additional spending increases in the Jewish state will guarantee the manufacture and deployment of three more Iron Dome systems by the end of 2012. The Israelis are hoping to eventually have at least a dozen of the anti-missile systems deployed along its northern and southern borders.

In a show of escalated tensions in the region, Iran test fired two long range missiles today. One, called the Qadar, is a powerful sea-to-shore missile. The other was an advanced surface-to-surface missile called the Nour. According to Iranian state news, the Nour is an ‘advanced radar-evading, target-seeking, guided and controlled missile’. Additionally, the Iranian military reportedly test-fired numerous other short, medium and long-range missiles. Yesterday, Iranian authorities reported that they test-fired the medium-range, surface-to-air, radar-evading Mehrab missile. Today is supposed to be the final day of Iranian naval drills in the Straits of Hormuz.

Iran recently made global headlines when it threatened to blockade the Straits of Hormuz if Europe and the US went ahead with their boycott of Iranian oil and the country’s central bank. One-quarter of the world’s oil passes through that waterway every day. President Obama has announced that a closure of the Straits was unacceptable and vowed to take whatever measures are necessary to keep the vital shipping lane open.

In response to the Iranian missile tests this weekend, French authorities were the first to respond, calling it a, “very bad signal to the international community."We want to underline that the development by Iran of a missile program is a source of great concern to the international community,"the French Foreign Ministry said in a written statement. Israeli officials suggested the flamboyant Iranian military drills this weekend were a sign that international sanctions on the country were taking a heavy toll and that any additional boycotts, on its banks or oil industry, would be crippling.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the large missile tests showed, “the dire straits of Iran in light of the tightening sanctions around her, including the considerations in the last few days regarding the sanctions of exporting petroleum as well as the possibility of sanctions against the Iranian Central Bank." While the chances of Iran going through with its threat of closing the Straits of Hormuz are slim, the deployment of thousands of US troops and naval ships to Israel shows the US isn’t taking any chances.

CENTCOM's Spy Satellite To Beam Images From War Zones

The ORS-1 satellite photographed during environmental testing last year at the Goodrich Corp's Danbury, Ct., facility.

PHOTO COURTESY OF GOODRICH CORP.

Illustration of the ORS-1 satellite, an operational prototype, scheduled for a one- to two-year mission.

U.S. AIR FORCE

By CHRIS CARROLL
Stars and Stripes
Published: July 25, 2011
Courtesy Of "Stars and Stripes"

WASHINGTON — Commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq will soon be able to track the enemy with their own spy satellite.

ORS-1, developed by the Pentagon’s Operationally Responsive Space Office and launched June 29, is the first satellite dedicated to a single combatant command. It’s scheduled to start beaming back tactical imagery in August after a check of the satellite’s systems is completed in orbit.

“What it does for CENTCOM is it gives us direct command over the tasking of this particular satellite,” said Col. Laura Berry, chief of the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance division for Central Command. “For all the others out there, we have to compete with the rest of the intelligence community”

The satellite adds a layer to CENTCOM’s arsenal of intelligence tools, Berry said. Requests from combat commanders for overhead imagery that might have previously been handled by a slow-moving drone could be assigned to the satellite orbiting earth at more than 17,000 mph.

Though Berry said ORS-1 will be able to do everything that CENTCOM commanders ask of it, there’s no doubt it’s a modest satellite, said Peter Wegner, head of the Pentagon’s ORS Office.

At about $200 million, it’s a relative bargain — developed and launched at a fraction of the cost of a typical orbiting surveillance platform.

“We’re exploring the low end of what we can do in space,” Wegner said. “If you compare it to the air domain, it’s like the difference between and F-22 fighter and a UAV,” or unmanned aerial vehicle.

The 900-pound, dishwasher-sized satellite will survey the battlefield from orbit 280 miles high, using the same camera as the U-2 spy plane or Global Hawk drone –- attached to a telescope that makes the satellite look similar to a tiny Hubble Space Telescope tilted toward the Earth.

An orbit that carries it over the CENTCOM region every 90 minutes will let OSR-1 train its camera on any given spot for about 10 minutes, Wegner said. It will be able to survey many locations across a broad area very quickly, he said, and commanders can dispatch a drone to linger over areas identified by the satellite that need more in-depth coverage.

The quality of the images is comparable to those from a drone, Wegner said -- not razor sharp, but good enough to do the job. The main objective is to get the satellite aloft quickly enough for commanders to use it in the current conflicts in the CENTCOM region.

Larger, more complex spy satellites can take more than a decade to develop and launch, he said. With anti-terrorism efforts increasingly focusing on far-flung parts of the globe that might be out of reach for UAVs, the United States can gain a decisive edge by learning to put cheap but effective satellites into orbit quickly, he said.

“From the time we got authority to proceed from the secretary of the Air Force to the time we launched was about 32 months,” Wegner said. “In a space acquisition context that’s lightning speed.”

China's Online Propaganda Inspires US Centcom

The US military has a contract with Ntrepid to develop software that would allow an army officer to control separate personas, with the aim of secretly manipulating conversations on social media websites  [GALLO/GETTY]


A New Online Initiative From US Central Command Seeks To Counter Terrorist Rhetoric In Multiple Languages.

By Jillian C. York
Last Modified: 02 Apr 2011 16:54
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

When news of China's "50 Cent Party", a cabal of internet commentators hired by the country to leave pro-government comments on blogs and forums broke a few years back, it was largely ridiculed in the Western media as an unwinnable PR strategy.

It is difficult to say whether China's strategy has been a success, but it has certainly inspired copycats, with a recent report suggesting the phenomenon might be coming soon to Russia.

According to a report from Global Voices, Russian bloggers have recently uncovered a job description looking for someone to leave seventy comments per day from up to fifty accounts on a single blog.

It appears that the United States has been won over by the idea. Not only does the department of state employ paid commenters, but a new $2.75 million initiative led by US Central Command would allow for the creation of sock puppets in order to combat online extremism.

"America's Own 50 Cent Party"

Since 2006, the Digital Outreach Team, a 10-person operation within the department of state's Bureau of International Information Programs, has engaged on blogs within the Arabic, Persian, and Urdu blogospheres, leaving comments on various sites while overtly identifying themselves as US government employees.

Unlike China's initiative, the US program targets individuals outside of the country, in the hopes of correcting misconceptions about United States foreign policy.

In late 2010, a paper released by the Foundation for Defence of Democracies (FDD) opined that the state department's efforts in this space have been ineffective in combating extremism in the Palestinian territories and that future efforts should include both a lack of disclosure and an increase in personnel. The FDD's paper also recommended the team become a source of intelligence.

Though there is no evidence that the FDD's paper effectively influenced the department of state's strategy, a more chilling approach is taking root. 

The United States military has contracted with California-based company Ntrepid to develop software that would allow users to secretly manipulate conversations on social media sites.

Sophisticated Sock puppetry

The operation, led by United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, would allow a US military officer to control up to ten separate, realistic personas “based” anywhere in the world.  In a piece by the Guardian, Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks stated that the operation would not target sites in English--rather, the target languages will be Arabic, Urdu, and Persian--nor sites hosted in the United States.

The stated purpose of the mission is to counter speech and violent propaganda online.  And surely, just as the revolutionaries in Egypt and Tunisia coordinated online, so can terrorists.

Though Centcom would not comment on whether they coordinate with the Department of State on their efforts, the Department’s Digital Outreach Team explicitly states that they don’t target extremist sites, due to their lack of traffic and unwillingness to engage with U.S. representatives.

But is manipulating fake personas the right way to go about targeting undesirable speech?  And is a $2.75 million, presumably tax-funded project like this worth the cost? Creating multiple spam accounts isn’t exactly rocket science, and as Jeff Jarvis points out, if the efforts are uncovered, the U.S. government will be seen as “stooping to the morals of a clumsy Nigerian spammer.”

More importantly, will an effort like this be effective?  Can military analysts successfully infiltrate terrorist groups via web forums or will time and taxpayer dollars be wasted targeting individuals unlikely to cause any damage to the United States.

If the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ advice were taken to heart, for example, taxpayer dollars would be essentially be spent defending Israel, not the United States.  With a vague descriptor like “violent propaganda,” it’s unclear which groups and individuals Centcom’s project will target, and how that will benefit U.S. citizens.

Jillian York is a writer, blogger, and activist based in Boston. She works at Harvard Law School's Berkman Centre for Internet & Society and is involved with Global Voices Online.

Pentagon Strategy To Prevent Genocide

By Nathan Hodge
May 4, 2010 | 1:47 pm
Courtesy Of The Wired Danger Room

When the Pentagon released its master strategy document earlier this year, the document contained an interesting phrase: The military needed to focus on “preventing human suffering due to mass atrocities or large-scale natural disasters abroad.”

The insertion of that line into the Quadrennial Defense Review marked a paradigm shift: Previous versions of the strategic plan included no such references to stopping “mass atrocities” as a military imperative. It was a quiet victory for advocates of a new vision of U.S. national power that would make genocide prevention a military priority.

And while genocide-prevention hasn’t been fully embraced by every arm of the military, it’s building momentum. In an event tomorrow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) will unveil the Mass Atrocity Response Operations military planning handbook, a step-by-step guide written by and for military planners that outlines how to stop a genocide.

How, exactly, would it work? Ideally, the handbook’s designers have argued, you stop a genocide before it happens, through diplomatic action, political pressure or pre-emptive deployment of a protective force. But sometimes you may have to go in heavy. Scott Feil, a retired Army officer who is a member of the project’s core planning group, has argued that a 5,000-strong task force from a modern military would have been sufficient to stop the killing in Rwanda.

It’s part of a larger effort by the Carr Center and PKSOI to sell the concepts of genocide prevention within the Pentagon and the national-security establishment. As Sally Chin, MARO Project Director at the Harvard Kennedy School, told Danger Room: “the 2006 National Security Strategy states that the US may be required to stop genocide or mass killings through armed intervention – but until the 2010 QDR, no official source directed the military to prepare or plan for such a contingency.”

This kind of project is supposed to reach an audience that matters most: The military’s powerful regional combatant commands. Why is this important? For starters, it could become the launching point for future military interventions. In delivering an annual threat assessment to Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said: “Looking ahead over the next five years, a number of countries in Africa and Asia are at significant risk for a new outbreak of mass killing. All of the countries at significant risk have or are at high risk for experiencing internal conflicts or regime crises and exhibit one or more of the additional risk factors for mass killing. Among these countries, a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in Southern Sudan.”

In other words, the U.S. government needs to be prepared for — and perhaps militarily plan for — intervening to stop mass killings. That doesn’t necessarily mean U.S. boots on the ground: Intervention, broadly speaking, could include a diplomatic offensive to prevent an outbreak of violence. Or it could mean convincing regional security organizations — the African Union, for instance — to deploy their own peacekeepers. But as the earlier MARO primer noted, U.S. combatant commands are likely to end up as “first responders” in some capacity if such an incident happens.

The “G word” is still politically fraught. Most recently, President Barack Obama had to dance around the subject in a statement to mark Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, which commemorates the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in 1915.